Make Your Monsters: Like Dark Souls

Bad ideas. If you do this you're gonna suffer from miyazaki syndrome, aka the irresistible urge to put poison swamps everywhere in your game world. It's addictive. Pls send help

I would recomend check out manga berserk for that topic. It was inspiration for souls games and imo can help with developing world without apocalyptic feeling to it.

A solid video, tho the topic needs a bit more condensing, you have a habit to get on tangents, with a lot more background images in the video to underline what you are talking about, kinda like a powerpoint presentation.

Overall I quite liked it, best of luck with growing your channel!

Cool vid!

Listen back to this video, and pay attention to how often you say "um."

It's a bad habit, but is fixable.

dont forget a monster like blood starved beast.

While dark souls was a good franchise, it in no way or form breaks top 50 as far as "changed fantasy gaming" 😂

I always warned friends of mine when they first tried DS1, be careful of the Torch Hollows. You WILL assume that they're just weak peons who you can walk all over, and then they stunlock you to death with ease. Most of them never took it seriously, and then they got absolutely destroyed. 🤣

Before I start watching what I have always taken away from the Soulsborne games is that they are experts at the Cronenberg style of body horror. the vast majority of their creature designs are taking ordinary creatures and warping them in some way this occurs mainly with humans.

undead enemies, crow demons, demons of lost izalith, wheel skeletons, pus of man, slimes, ghouls, crystal soldiers, Oolacile residents, pisaca, ghosts, pinwheel, mass of souls, outrider knight, mimic, Irithyllian slaves, Sulyvahn's beast, deep accursed, sewer centipede, corvian, man-grub, maggot-grub, Ghru, serpent men, murkmen, pilgrim, caged hollow, lycanthrope, wretch, and others I forgot are humans that are mutated in some way.

Or that they use a throughline to tell a story, in most of their game's dragons go down a path of devolution.

In Elden Ring, there are ancient dragons, dragons, wyvern like dragons, snakes, etc.
In Dark Souls there are everlasting/archdragons, dragons, hellkites, drakes, primordial serpents, serpents, lizards, hydras, and basilisks.
In Sekiro, carps, snakes, centipedes, lizards, and eels are related to dragons.

My monsters don't like Dark Souls and this didn't help :(

This was a amazing video

Why limit yourself and make things in an image of something and not use the unlimited human imagination to come up with something unique and original (well, to a reasonable extent) ???

Elongated limbs, ragged hair, guant emaciated features and exposed rib cages with an overall gothic theme are common design features. And roots. A lot of Fromsoftware monsters have root and branch like features in their designs. Also something wierd about the left arm. A lot of souls born bosses have wierd left arms. Fromsoftware also likes to make things look melancholic, forlorn and sad. People focus a lot on the horror aspect, but what I find to be the most defining feature about the Fromsoftware aesthetic is a permeable melancholy and sadness in all of their designs.

Make your monsters like Berserk*

As far as learnable patterns go, I like to use "bloodied" which I think is a Condition from 4e dnd and just completely change up its attacks and such. When making a dark soulsian boss, you can't forget phase 2

I would suggest for a lot of monsters if you are going to go with the pattern adding in a spot for a special attack if available. To use your demon centaur example:
currently you have
Turn 1 charge
Turn 2 trample
Turn 3 run
Turn 4 repeat

But you can add to this like so:
Turn 1 charge
Turn 2 trample
Turn 3.a tail attack if recharged (recharge on a 5 or 6)
Turn 3.b run
Turn 4 repeat

We can even make it more interesting with adding ranged weapons
Turn 1 charge
Turn 2 trample
Turn 3.a tail attack if recharged (recharge on a 5 or 6)
Turn 3.b run
Turn 4 Bow attack
Turn 5 repeat

now (and obviously I am using 5e rules based on my current campaign...check out my channel) Boss monsters can get really interesting

So lets make a boss version of that same demon centaur, a Demon Centaur Lord.

Turn 1. Charge
Legendary action rear kick
Turn 2. Trample
Legendary action breath attack (wide angle, low damage)
Turn 3.a tail sweep attack if recharged (recharge on a 4, 5, or 6)
Turn 3.b run with leaping back kick (jumps over a player, back kicks that player possibly sending prone, and then finishes running)
Lenendary action cloud kill (I mean it's tail is facing the players now)
Turn 4 Bow attack
Turn 5 Repeat

For really nasty fun add a second Demon Centaur Lord...have the second one start on the turn 4 counter though.

Finally (and I saw it mentioned in the other comments and almost face palmed for forgetting it, add in the 4e bloodied condition and give the boss monsters a phase 2. So what would that look like for our pair of Demon Centaur Lords?

On bloodied the turn order changes like so:

Turn 1 Charging sword sweep
Legendary action rear kick
Turn 2 Trample
Legendary action narrow breath attack (only one target but more damage)
Turn 3 tail sweep (loses need for recharge)
Turn 4 Run with leaping back kick
Legendary action cloud kill upcast (1 level)
Turn 5 Great bow attack
Turn 6 Repeat

nothing quite makes a player as unsettled as describing a monsters smell by asking for a CON save :)

I played the sound of a clock ticking to signal the arrival of one of the monsters in a game I was running. I’d never actually tell them the monster was approaching, I would just quietly start playing the sound and wait until they noticed and reacted naturally. It worked really well at freaking them out.

Interesting analysis. Shadowdark has a useful set of random charts for adding random variations to monsters, so encounters with the same creature can have a lot of different flavors. I also remember the design team from 4th Ed. D&D talking about how any monster that isn't just a mook or minion should have about 3 different things it can do in combat, which certainly jives with your advice about monster attack patterns.